The Charleston Magnolia Garden Club (CMGC) is beginning a new garden year, basking in the afterglow of our awards: at the state convention CMGC won the Garden Clubs of Mississippi (GCM) State President’s Award, and the plum, The Outstanding Garden Club of the Year 2025!
Writing articles from our past year of September 2024 to May 2025, CMGC’s current president Gay Lynn Dungan Haynes admits to severely understating this last award and its prestige-bearing status.
Allow me to explain the significance of CMGC being selected as The Outstanding Garden Club in a community of garden clubs, not just in our super wonderful state.
The CMGC was chosen for this award from six states: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi. This special excellence places us in an inner circle among clubs with 60 members rather than our modest 22 members in CMGC.
It represents hours of hard work by our club members, and with Carol Bullard, Celia Williamson, Allison Ashmore, and Martha Joe Venable documenting our efforts. They compose the president’s report, an extensively written report with an application to six districts of Mississippi followed by an application to those six states above, who comprise the Deep South Garden Clubs Inc.
By winning this award, the aforementioned members and other members, Joy Montgomery, current vice president; Marline Carpenter, current treasurer; Sassy Mauldin, current GCM president; Flora Vance; Annette Montgomery; Lucy Boyette; Elizabeth Fly; Carrie Rice; Clyde Callihan; Mahaley Hames; Jeanie Hobson; Joy Mullen; Amy Sherman and our newest members, Kayla Wilkinson, Joanna Patton and Anne Finch Walker, represent a diligent, persevering group who sadly will not be eligible for this award for two years. (This award is not given to the same club in back-to-back years, much like the same Miss Mississippi cannot win Miss America two times in a row anymore historically.)
Nevertheless, our club expects to distinguish itself despite this restriction for our new garden year. Managing our continued projects: the courthouse square, community garden, Adopt a Highway, Memorial Garden, flower show, club-sponsored luncheon, Yard of the Month, and youth awards are in our wheelhouse.
We humbly offer our skills by the grace of God each year and we have been finally acknowledged on a national stage.
